Opinion: There is a way to be happy. Here are some insights

Born and raised in Berkeley, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, is now the science director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. She is a leading expert on the neuroscience and psychology of compassion, kindness, gratitude, and other “pro-social” skills.

As fall classes start up again in Berkeley, UC Berkeley professor Dacher Keltner and I are launching a free online course that teaches one of the most important life skills: happiness.

The Science of Happiness course is offered through edX.org and open to anyone, not just UC Berkeley students. Nearly half a million people from all over the world have enrolled since we began offering it in 2014, and it consistently ranks among the top ten courses on edX. For me, it’s a joy to share insights about well-being with students around the world—and from my hometown.

If you want to discover how scientific research can help you live a happier and more meaningful life, join us for an eight-week course covering themes from mindfulness to kindness to gratitude. (It started Sept. 5) And if you want a sneak peek of what we cover, below I’ve distilled the three realizations about happiness that tend to be the most moving, motivating, and surprising to people.

Most of us get happiness wrong.

Happiness is not a new idea, nor does the average person struggle with explaining what it means. Even in the research, a standard measure of happiness presumes that people have an intuitive sense of it and can accurately and reliably place themselves on a scale from “Not a very happy person” to “A very happy person.” Knowing what happiness is, however, does not make the average person good at pursuing it.

The first mistake that people make is equating happiness, the overarching quality of life, with the temporary enjoyment we feel in response to something pleasurable. Why is this a problem? Well, if happiness is equivalent to momentary enjoyment, then the logical conclusion is that happiness will emerge from stringing together a perpetual sequence of enjoyable moments. As one of my long-ago college classmates counseled a friend, “All that matters in life is sex and money.” Wrong. Happiness will not arise from striving to accumulate increasingly pleasurable and luxurious things or striving to constantly feel and convey bubbly cheer and enthusiasm (to “be positive”).

When it comes to feelings and happiness, the trick, it seems, is: 1) to readily experience pleasure at the right times—e.g., to laugh when the joke is funny, savor the delicious food, bask in the warmth of affection, and capitalize on those feelings so they last; 2) to acknowledge and express feelings that arise under more difficult circumstances, like anger, sadness, and fear, as they signal important information about what to do next; and then 3) to practice resilience so we can recover from these states gracefully and learn from them.

Mindfulness is key.

Over the past 30 years, we’ve seen rapidly expanding scientific inquiry into mindfulness, defined both as a deliberate exercise (meditation) or a more general manner that involves attending to the present moment with kindness, gentleness, and compassion. Basically, wherever researchers look, mindfulness (if not taken to extremes or applied to extreme circumstances) is beneficial.

From a happiness standpoint, mindfulness can be considered both a launching pad and a catalyst. As a launching pad, mindfulness offers people a technique for noticing their existing habits of thinking and feeling and exploring whether any of their beliefs, biases, or habits might be getting in the way of happiness. For example, do you reflexively, though perhaps inexplicably, hate apologizing? Given the evidence that apologies reduce chronic stress and increase happiness and productivity in apologizers and recipients, could mindfulness enable you to explore that aversion, and perhaps tinker with it?

Some of the most compelling evidence that suggests mindfulness might be a catalyst to happiness comes from the Track Your Happiness iPhone app, which pings thousands of people all over the world to share their activities and feelings throughout the day. As founder and scientist Matt Killingsworth reported in Science, their findings suggest that people enjoy what they are doing more if they are focused on what they are doing, right when they are doing it. From waiting in line to watching movies, if we’re paying attention to this instead of thinking about something else, we tend to be enjoying it more. In a similar vein, other studies report that mindfulness increases enjoyment of chocolate and sex.

Cultivating happiness takes work.

Like learning to play the ukulele, boosting our overall happiness level is not something we can do in one sitting. Throughout the Science of Happiness course, we emphasize the recurring finding that, all things considered, the most promising way to ratchet up happiness is to invest in social relationships—strengthen our connections, hone habits of kindness, and do work that contributes to something greater than ourselves.

Regrettably, particularly in the United States, social norms don’t favor these objectives. Human capacities that drive caretaking, goodwill, and serving the greater good are less valued and thus have less and less influence on our day-to-day experiences. Instead, the environments that we spend most of our time in, like schools and workplaces, focus more on independence, self-determination, and peer competition. Cultural norms like these hone our expertise in self-focus; we get really good at maximizing self-interest and being suspicious of anything that threatens our wealth or reputation.

Like physical therapy after an injury, it takes commitment to strengthen and reclaim the function of our core “pro-social” demeanor—to learn skills around trust, reconciliation, and teamwork. To do this, most of us need to unravel some of our existing habits and be vulnerable. Holding grudges, for example, can feel righteous and core to who we are and where we stand. Forgiveness, on the other hand, lowers blood pressure, improves cardiovascular health, and fuels social ease and connection. But it’s hard to let go. Like stripping out the crumbling foundation of a building and rebuilding it to last, the pursuit of happiness is a deliberate and sometimes-fragile process that requires continued effort.

Whenever I teach the science of happiness, I try to leave people with something they can do right after they walk out of the room. Often the simplest, most accessible message is gratitude. Feeling grateful fosters a more accurate understanding of happiness, strengthening our social connections and motivating us to engage and give back to others. Gratitude is often a theme of mindfulness practices and is squarely focused on the role that others play in our own life’s goodness. Reflecting upon and expressing gratitude is an exercise in capitalizing on enjoyment, building trust, and softening self-focus; we acknowledge what is good and attribute the source of that goodness to others, and this can help anyone avoid the common pitfalls of pursuing happiness.

How can we get better at expressing gratitude? Try this: when thanking someone, 1) say what they did that you are thankful for, 2) acknowledge the effort it took for them to do this, and 3) describe how it was good for you.